I loved this book because I’m a feminist who loves murder mysteries with characters I can relate to, and this was the perfect blend of a gripping murder mystery of a woman student at a boarding school with a strong feminist commentary on the societal reality of violence against women by men close to them.
I went to a boarding school 50 years ago, so I could relate to the setting and the students, and also to the narrator, an older woman feminist alumna returning to teach podcasting to this generation.
I had the same biases as the narrator, which prevented both of us from seeing the real murderer. Complex and satisfying!
**A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK FOR OPRAH DAILY, TIME, NPR, USA TODAY, BUSTLE, STAR TRIBUNE, GOOD HOUSEKEEPING AND MORE**
'Whip-smart and uncompromising' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
'Quietly riveting' IRISH TIMES
'It's the perfect crime' NEW YORKER
'Impressive and complex' GUARDIAN
'Addictive' OPRAH DAILY
The riveting new novel from the author of The Great Believers, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award
A successful film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane is content to forget her past: the family tragedy that marred her adolescence, her four largely miserable years at a New Hampshire boarding school, and the 1995 murder…
I loved this book because Demon, the main character, touched me. As soon as I finished, I listened to it again, just to keep him and his perspective in my life.
Demon made me feel poverty on a visceral level that will prevent me from blaming anyone who has found themselves caught in it. His child’s voice was innocent, believable, humorous, and poignant at the same time. He taught me about patience and compassion toward people who are hurting you.
Never have I better understood the quicksand of poverty, how hard it is to get out of, the vicious cycle downward of bad relationships, drugs, drinking, and violence, and how much the children suffer.
Demon's story begins with his traumatic birth to a single mother in a single-wide trailer, looking 'like a little blue prizefighter.' For the life ahead of him he would need all of that fighting spirit, along with buckets of charm, a quick wit, and some unexpected talents, legal and otherwise.
In the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, poverty isn't an idea, it's as natural as the grass grows. For a generation growing up in this world, at the heart of the modern opioid crisis, addiction isn't an abstraction, it's neighbours, parents, and friends. 'Family' could mean love, or reluctant foster…
I loved this book because it is hard for me to recognize my own privilege as a white woman, and Wendy Sanford helped me see it by being vulnerable and honest enough to see it in herself.
By showing the nuanced everyday actions she took and the attitudes she had to change to counteract her learned white privilege and show up for her African American friend, she gave me hope that I could do the same. Her insightful observations and gripping family scenes of class, race, and gender interactions made me see my own family and class dynamics more clearly.
Along with historical and current information about racism and white privilege in the United States, I felt educated about the insidiousness of racism and optimistic I could change.
From an author of the best-selling women's health classic Our Bodies, Ourselves
comes a bracingly forthright memoir about a life-long friendship across
racial and class divides. A white woman's necessary learning, and a
Black woman's complex evolution, make These Walls Between Us a "tender, honest, cringeworthy and powerful read." (Debby Irving, author, Waking Up White.)
In the mid-1950s, a fifteen-year-old African American teenager named
Mary White (now Mary Norman) traveled north from Virginia to work for
twelve-year-old Wendy Sanford's family as a live-in domestic for their
summer vacation by a remote New England beach. Over the years, Wendy's
family came…
What does a free-spirited, fifty-something professional do when she breaks up with her non-committal boyfriend and longs for a life partner?
She challenges herself to go on fifty-first dates, promises herself sex along the way, and voila, finding Mr. Right becomes a sexy dating project!
This book is an upbeat, easy-to-read, romantic, and very sexy story about searching for and finding the right person, a midlife woman’s successful, sex-positive dating story. Erotic in places and funny in others, it offers an uplifting and inspirational view of dating as an enjoyable journey of self-discovery and self-love, celebrates female sexuality, and provides an entertaining smorgasbord of dating ideas for any woman searching for her own Mr. Right.
